EFTA00317105.pdf

Sharing a Meal in Jeffrey's Dining Room... With Jeffrey and Friends Lawrence M. Krauss Every meal with Jeffrey has been a unique event but two special occasions come to mind as I think about the exotic menagerie of dining experiences with Jeffrey. The first was a lunch in the dining room of the New York house. Jeffrey had arranged for Woody Allen and his wife to come to lunch, along with several rather well known and exciting individuals, including a Nobel Laureate, and two well- known investors and philanthropists. While I was looking forward to meeting Woody, who had expressed some interest in my last book, I had figured that in the end there would be little time to actually chat and answer any questions he might have. Of course, that assumption underestimated Jeffrey's planning skills. When I arrived, Jeffrey had set up a blackboard by the dining room table, and I ended up giving a seminar on forefront ideas in Cosmology and Physics, and was grilled primarily by Woody for almost and hour. It was a surreal experience and one that I figured would end with the lunch. However, Woody asked me afterword to let him know next time I was in town, and since that time I have had the pleasure on numerous occasions of having dinner and enjoyable conversations with, now friends, Woody and Soon-Yi. I was able to return the favor a few years later when I arranged for Noam Chomsky and his wife Valeria to have lunch with Jeffrey and me at Jeffrey's home in New Mexico, before Jeffrey flew the three of us to Phoenix for an event we were doing there for my Origins Project. Jeffrey had wanted to meet Noam for some time, and it was a magical afternoon, as two people who anyone would have imagined could ever hit it off discussed, debated, and joked. Jeffrey never let up, and Noam took everything Jeffrey could dish out in stride. Since that time, Noam and Jeffrey have met frequently, and continued their friendly banter. It was a marriage of minds begun, not in heaven, but in Jeffrey's dining room, as so many other marriages have no doubt begun.... EFTA00317105